Cold Irons Bound
by gypsy season
Summary: During the year that never was, Lucy Saxon needs someone to talk to. Or hurt. Depending on her mood. Captain Jack Harkness is available.
1. stain on her dress

She takes two hours to get ready every morning. Shower, hair, makeup, dress, jewelry, shoes, coordinating everything to make herself look flawless. She only needs an hour and a half at the very most, but she likes to take her time, studying herself, the pores, an errant hair on her left eyebrow, the wrinkles that are starting to show around the corners of her mouth.

Morning indulgences are all she has to call her own, and only after sufficient pampering will her husband even look at her, let alone touch her. Only then is she ready to stand at his side. Trying not to flinch.

Playing dress up, every tiny flaw hidden away, is all done so that Master Saxon has something pretty to look at when he's not busy with The Doctor or his other pets; so that after a long, hard day at work, he can come home to a loving, beautiful wife. It's all very 50's suburbia, except they're on a spaceship and the earth has been overrun by aliens.

Not that she's deferring blame. Lucy Saxon is just as responsible as her husband. She was an integral part of his plan to take over the world; except now that the world's been taken over, there isn't much left for her to do.

She reads. She primps. She sits with her hands under her thighs to keep from biting her nails from the sheer anxiety of careening out of control, blindfolded and bound, senseless and helpless. She would keep a diary, if she wasn't so terrified that Harry would find it and read it. She stands at his side and waits for his command, for his leave, for the hand that strokes her to clamp down.

It's about midday, and Harry is leaning over the conference table, scrutinizing a piece of paper. She comes up behind him, wrapping her arms around his middle and kissing the soft skin behind his ear. When he doesn't respond, she comes around his side and drags her tongue along his jaw line.

"Busy now, love," he says distractedly, twisting out of her grasp. "Leave a message after the beep."

He ends up crumpling the paper in his effort to pick it up off the slippery table, so he gives up, sprinting across the room and jumping into a chair that sends him rolling halfway across the room, like a fucking child. She takes her leave and doesn't realize that Harry's changed his mind until the door she's just closed behind her slams open and he leaps at her, hands on her shoulders, steering her into the nearest wall.

The impact is painful, and by the time her instincts release a surprised cry from her lips, Harry is already bunching up the skirt of her dress in one hand and pulling down her underwear with the other. Lucy notices that he doesn't need a free hand to unzip his fly; it must have been open all day.

"Surprise!" His voice quivering with excitement, and so is the rest of him, as he shoves his cock inside her without any further warning.

She gasps, shuddering, and then recovers. "Harry loves his surprises."

"Mmm, he does," he says, and starts thrusting.

She rakes her fingers across his scalp, but the hair's too short for her to pull. Wrapping an arm around his neck is all she can do to keep from falling over; he's hooked his left leg around the back of her knees, and the whole thing is throwing her dangerously off balance.

When he comes, his scream becomes a laugh, and he pulls out as soon as he's through. As soon as _he's_ through. She's left leaning against the wall, dizzy and aching, so close to release that she snakes her own hand between her legs as she watches her husband sprint back into the conference room.

He comes and goes as he pleases, her husband.

--

Jack notices the stain on her dress and leans towards her, as far as his chains will let him. "All the torture he puts me through, and yours is, by far, the hardest to take."

"Yes, but you don't have much of a choice, do you?" Lucy says, unsympathetic. Keeping her distance, she folds her hands politely over the stain, scratches at it with her thumbnail to confirm that it has dried. She is constantly needing to remind herself that Jack is chained up, because the hungry way he eyes her, licking his lips, makes her heart race.

"Tell me about it," he begs, all his weight leaning forward, held up by his shackles alone.

He's so desperate, and Lucy considers that he just might need her as much as he lets on. Harry's always needed her, but his was a need fueled by opportunism and conquest, that whole world domination thing. Jack doesn't have anything else; there's just Lucy, and Lucy likes to feel needed.

She does not move an inch. "Say please."

If only she could have unchained him... it would have been so perfect to watch him fall to his knees and beg from there, because she knows he would.

--

Try as she might, she can't quite remember the last time she and Harry actually had a conversation. Lately, their words are all just whispers and orders and teases and little snatches of what she knows he wants to hear.

He calls her over to watch him kill the man chained up in the engine room. Up until the first time Harry makes her watch, Lucy always thought it just a fluke for "the freak" to survive Harry's laser, back when her life still made some sense. Back before the world went completely ridiculous.

But then Harry ducks under the chains and deftly snaps the man's neck.

"Keep time for me, dear Lucy," Harry says, but Lucy's mind is still trying to process the sickening pop that she's just heard, the way the prisoner's head had dropped to his chest, how his body went slack, and the way the chains still held him up. Her heart is pounding in her throat.

"Count! I said count," comes her husband's order, along with a snap of his fingers, and Lucy winces, out of her thoughts and into obedience.

"One, two, three..."

Sixty seconds go by, and Lucy is looking up at Harry, waiting to be relieved of her duty, when the prisoner suddenly draws in a long, ragged breath, stumbles to regain his footing and, with a bit of twisting around, pops his neck back into place.

Lucy lets out a yelp and then claps her hands over her mouth. Still standing behind the prisoner, Harry just chuckles to himself. "Oh, that is very good."

She can't imagine what Harry could have possibly done to bring the man back to life, but she feels like an idiot for letting such a trifle spook her after all the other things she's seen.

With a groan, the prisoner stands up a little straighter, cocking his head at Lucy. "Captain Jack Harkness," he says, panting, eyes slightly mad. "At your service."

"Get ready, Lucy!" Harry announces, taking Jack's head in his hands again. "I'm going to try it in the other direction now."

--

Nothing can hold Harry's attention for long. He gets bored so easily, and only kills Jack Harkness four more times that day before he goes off to seek fun elsewhere. Lucy is left with the prisoner, who has yet to come back to life. She steels herself for the gasp; the longer she waits for it, the more she notices that she actually is waiting, with breath that is practically bated, not even sure if he will wake up this time (that last time Harry killed seemed much more forceful than the previous times).

Even though Harry's relieved her, even though he's not even there anymore, she's still counting, silently taking note of every second the man spends dead.

Jack gasps, screams and then shudders a bit before he straightens himself out. He's rolling his head from one shoulder to another, arching his back as far as it will stretch, when he notices Lucy watching him.

"Is he still standing behind me?"

A shake of her head, and he laughs, sounding relieved and oddly triumphant, which really does not make any sense, considering the chains, and how the only reason for Harry's leaving was his infantile attention span.

"It seems that our introductions were interrupted," he says when he finally stops laughing. "Terribly rude of me, dying and all. Where are my manners,"

"What are you?" she says abruptly, cutting off his words. He chews his lip thoughtfully and considers the question.

"I'm a dead man. Captain Jack Harkness."

"You already told me your name," she warns.

He smiles. "Beautiful and bitchy. Take me now!"

It's been so long since she's been given any warning before she'd be thrown onto the nearest surface and fucked, and even longer since she's been asked. While Lucy doesn't think she's ever going to be asked again, it still makes her heart flutter when she is warned. Even though Jack being chained in place and unable to even touch her should be no consolation, Lucy's thinking hypothetically.

Jack is just staring, mesmerized by her stillness, and the fruits of her morning ministrations.

There's dirt and engine oil on his face. His clothes are dirty, stained with blood. Lucy has the sudden urge to shoot him with a water hose, drown him if she has to, anything to clean him up a bit. The contrast between the two of them is so strong, it's like there's a third person in the room with them, doing nothing but screaming, screaming at the top of their lungs.

Lucy can't stand the screaming. "Shut up," she says quietly, and walks out quickly.


	2. a discovery, and a dagger

Jack won't stop screaming.

Given that there is a dagger plunged into his abdomen, it makes enough sense. But Lucy has been waiting for him to die, wishing he would get on with dying already, so she can yank out the blade and stab him again when he comes back to life. She sits on a storage crate with her knees tucked up to her chest and waits.

He's being very stubborn about it.

Blood is flowing steadily from the wound; Lucy watches it, tries to imagine the sound of a waterfall, running water, so that she won't just hear screaming.

Then he starts screaming her name, and she doesn't appreciate that at all. It takes her four steps, four urgent strides, to cross the room and get close, inches away from touching him. She grips the handle of the blade, and Jack struggles, tries to recoil, and resigns himself to the agony because there is nothing else he can do.

He chokes on blood as he tries to say something, but Lucy shoves the blade deeper, ripping an even more agonized scream from deeper inside him. She can feel it, he's so close, so she grips his shoulder with her other hand, rips the blade out and then uses all her strength to send it back in.

The scream dies in his throat.

Finally, all his muscles that were pulled taught are now lax. Eyes no longer being squeezed shut against the pain are now closed for lack of life instead.

Something warm drips into the corner of Lucy's eye. She blinks and then wipes the offensive wetness away. Her fingers come away smeared with red; blood. She realizes then that he spat blood on her face, when he had been screaming. Intentional or not, it still bothers her.

Glancing down at her other hand, the one still clutching the handle of the blade, she sees that blood has soaked her halfway to her elbow. There's blood all down the front of her dress, which she smears with her fingers in a halfhearted attempt to wipe it away.

She'll have to change now, which she decides with a significant amount of regret, because she's always loved the way the gold silk of her dress brushed against the front of her thighs when she walked, soft, cold, sleek. She loves the dress, and hopes it can be cleaned.

Hurrying off to her closet and bathroom, she pretends that oops, she forgot to take the blade out. Pretends, because she doesn't forget. She just leaves it, and gets far enough away, when Jack comes back to life, to not hear his screaming.

--

Harry's dragging her down corridor after corridor at a steady jog, her wrist clasped in his tight grip, where she can feel his wedding ring digging painfully into her. "You really must have a look at this, love."

If she didn't think so much about repercussions, Lucy would have asked Harry to slow down. She's tripping over her own feet, struggling to run across a metal grid floor in heels. It is during this run that she comes to realize that she never says what's in her head. A conscience is always warning her about Harry this and Harry that, and her stomach twists into knots when she thinks about it.

Onward, she runs, through the labyrinth, into the belly of the Valiant, into that damn engine room again, where she knows Harry's just taking her to see Jack again. Harry treats him with as much enthusiasm as a new puppy, and as much care as a science project, all experimenting and mixing chemicals. He has no regard for the outcome, just as long as the mixing is fun.

It's no fun for Lucy, though. She's about to break an ankle, or at least a heel.

"This really is very fascinating," Harry tells her. "The Freak really delivers when it comes to the show."

"What is it now?" She doesn't even try to feign interest; it won't make any difference.

"It's just... I've killed him quite a few times now. You were there for that. When I snapped his neck, his bones all shifted back in place. I shot him in the head," there's a twinge of smug satisfaction in his words, and he grins. "The wound just... closed right up."

"Fascinating."

"Hurting him, though, I could try breaking his arm. Surely no one's ever died of a broken arm. Humans, though... you can never be sure."

"You're trying to tell me that he only heals if injured fatally."

"That's what I want to find out, my darling. My clever," he pecks her chastely on the corner of her mouth, "clever love." Lucy doesn't think he's ever kissed her there. The act is gentle, soft, hardly something to worry about, in terms of bruising. It felt... nice. She licked the spot where her lips parted, tasting a bit of Harry on her tongue.

She would have to be more clever in the future if she wanted any more kisses like that. It makes her smile, thinking about all the other places where Harry can kiss like that, soft, sweet, and she doesn't even hear Harry talking anymore. He's still planning ways to hurt without killing, which Lucy knows Harry has trouble telling apart.

And then there's Jack, chained up by his arms, as usual. "Lucy," he nods his head politely to her, steeling himself to face Harry, to whom he says nothing.

"Good morning yourself," Harry says, sounding far more offended than he actually is. The dramatics are a little much for Lucy, but this is no longer for her, this show, the matinee performance of Harold the Conqueror setting himself loose on the man who finds himself royally fucked by his unique circumstances. How ironic, a man who could never die, getting killed over and over, and tortured even more frequently.

Maybe it was fun. By comparison, anyway, it was far more stimulating than watching cities crumbling into the sea.

"Let's see," Harry mutters, playing with his fingers as he considers his first move. But this is all part of the show. Harry is very good at causing pain, and should never need this much time to think and plan. But this is all for fun; and if he plans wrong, he can always have a do-over.

--

Lucy wants to understand the way Jack's mind works, figure out the mechanics of it all. Maybe then she could have an idea why he was trying to break out of his chains and shackles. Stoic, like a cat, she watches him strain and struggle, his muscles bulging beneath his shirt, his face screwed up tight, as he works at the chains that are bolted to the wall.

Hoping that she frustrates him by neither offering to help nor calling for security, but also uncertain of Jack even noticing that she's there, Lucy coughs to make her presence known.

There is no response from Jack, so she prompts him further. "Where exactly do you plan on going? Once you've broken free, of course."

Jack scoffs at her. He is not surprised, so Lucy can safely assume that he had just been ignoring her rather than be ignorant of her. In fact, he probably only remained silent because she hadn't addressed him until then.

"I'd jump."

The response is confident and without hesitation. Lucy is surprised to get a response at all, a response to a question that she had asked only in mockery.

"Wherever I'd land," he continues, "I'd get up and start running, and just like that I'd be free."

He would be free, but Lucy would still be a prisoner. She couldn't just leap from The Valiant and run from wherever she landed; her organs would all flatten and explode, and every bone in her body would shatter. Her blood and brains would stain the earth and leave a mess that someone should have to clean up eventually.

But not Jack. He would be free, unless Harry got to him before he came back to life, before he ever could start running. Scoop him up and chain him back up again, once his body had repaired itself.

"I should like to inform Harold of this," she says.

"About how I can survive impossible falls? I should like that very much." With a renewed vigor, Jack goes back to pulling on the chains. He fights with all his strength, holding on with every muscle, until his body forces him to breathe and, gasping, he collapses. Then he finds his footing again and directs his focus to the other chain.

It's a clever plan, rotating from chain to chain, using equal efforts on both of them, so that he won't have one arm free and the other still days away from release when Harry will walk in on him and beat him so badly, and keep him alive, so that Jack would have to recover slowly, like a normal person.

Lucy envies his strength; Jack's, not Harry's. "He won't, though," she says, and Jack stops to listen. "Throw you off. Not unless he can get down quick enough to scoop you right up and lock you away again before you come to."

"And wouldn't he love that," Jack sneers, all too aware of Lucy's loyalties and priorities. Without a doubt, he knows that she'll tell Harry, and that when he comes back to life it will be to the familiar humidity and smells of metal and oil of the dimly lit engine room.

All Jack wants, after escaping the chains and then the Valiant, finding the remaining members of Torchwood, shagging Ianto into a coma, rescuing the Doctor, killing the Master and saving the human race, is to have someone he can talk to, someone to tell how painful it is for the sounds and smells of the engine room of the Valiant to have become familiar. He can only anticipate falling victim to some form of Stockholm Syndrome next. But still, despite never being one to share his feelings, Jack really just wants someone to talk to.

Lucy, despite the many conversations Jack has had with her, is not someone to talk to; she is an asset, a blessedly unbalanced asset, one who Jack hopes will one day give him real means by which he can escape. Until that day, he'll need her, and he'll need to keep his head together.

He'll need to work faster with breaking out of his chains, if he wants to succeed with the latter.


End file.
